Neeraj Kanwar of Apollo Tyres: Always in motion
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. In October, when the Indian cricket team walked on to the pitch in Ahmedabad during the Test series against West Indies with the Apollo Tyres logo on their shirts, it was a moment of intense pride for Neeraj Kanwar. “It’s not just a logo.
It is India’s cricket team jersey that sports Apollo Tyres," he says. The managing director of the Gurugram-headquartered multinational tyre company, founded in 1972 by his grandfather Raunaq Singh, says the ₹579-crore, three-year deal with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to become the principal sponsor of the national team was a well thought-out marketing move. “We are reaching tier 2, 3, 4 markets in India and also wherever cricket and the Indian team is being watched across the globe.
This gives us big visibility," he says over a call from London, where he spends part of his time. The Indian women’s cricket team lifting the World Cup soon after the deal was announced made the association feel even more special. Kanwar hopes the men’s team will follow with a World Cup victory next year.
It’s a good time for Kanwar, 54, to look back at his journey with the company, which he joined in 1995 after graduating in industrial engineering from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and working in a bank in the US for a year. He entered the company quietly, almost anonymously, as he wanted to understand it from the ground up. “I was a very junior guy.
I joined as Neeraj Singh, not as Kanwar, so that no one knew who I was," he says. His first posting was as a trainee in marketing at the transport hubs of Delhi, places where tyres are sold in the heat and noise of India’s trucking lanes. He worked in Peera Garhi and Sanjay Gandhi Transport Nagar,
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